~ Never late for the truth

Predicting Prayer Man’s body height using the 7 1/2 rule.

The body height and location of Prayer Man, the unknown man standing at the western wall in Darnell film, are a matter of continuing debates. If Prayer Man was a tall person 5’9”, he could only be a male, and the very likely candidate for Prayer Man would be Lee Harvey Oswald. If it was Lee Harvey Oswald posing as Prayer Man in Darnell film, he could not be on the sixth floor to shoot at the President.

In my previous blog article [1], a hypothesis pertaining Prayer Man’s location and body height has been outlined. The hypothesis postulates that Prayer Man was a man 5’9” and stood with his right foot on the second step and his left foot on the top landing. This blog article addresses the problem of Prayer Man’s body height using a simple method known as the 7 1/2 rule.

The 7 1/2 rule refers to the ratio of the head height and the overall body height. In simple terms, the body height in a normal human person corresponds to the height of 7 1/2 heads stacked on each other. This rule has been elaborated by visual artists to aid in sketching natural looking human bodies even if a body would be depicted in a complicated posture [2]. The 7 1/2 rule also allows estimating the lengths of different body parts such as arms.

Fortunately, the height of Prayer Man’s head can be determined in Darnell’s stills. Therefore, the 7 1/2 rule for body proportions can give another clue on how tall Prayer Man was and where did he stand.

Figure 1 shows a front view of Lee Harvey Oswald in one of the mug-shot photographs taken by the New Orleans Police Department on August 10, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on Canal Street in New Orleans for an altercation occurring during his leafleting of pro-Castro sheets. The photograph was mildly processed by adding light into dark tones. The vertically arranged grey rectangles refer to the 7 1/2 rule applied to Lee Harvey Oswald’s body. The top rectangle and every other full rectangle match the height of Lee Harvey Oswald’s head. Figure 1 confirms that the 7 1/2 rule would be applicable in estimating Lee Harvey Oswald’s body height if only his head would be visible.

Figure 1: The 7 1/2 rule applied to Lee Harvey Oswald’s body. The top and every other full rectangle correspond to the height of Lee Harvey Oswald’s head. 7 1/2 rectangles cover the height of the body.

The original Darnell still with Prayer Man in the shadow is shown in Figure 2. The stack of 7 1/2 rectangles, which covered Lee Harvey Oswald’s body in Figure 1, was copied onto Darnell still and the rectangles have been adjusted in such a way that the top rectangle would match Prayer Man’s head. Prayer Man’s head is delineated by two horizontal lines to illustrate the match with the top rectangle. The lowest of the rectangles in this simple analysis indicates the platform on which Prayer Man had to stand given his head size and the plausibility of the 7 1/2 rule. The edges of the first and second steps are highlighted in Figure 2 with a pair of horizontal orange lines. The 7 1/2 rule predicted that Prayer Man’s body would reach as low as the tread of the second step.

Figure 2: The 7 1/2 rule applied to Prayer Man’s figure in Darnell film. The pair of yellow lines are the vertical limits of Prayer Man’s head. The pair of orange lines corresponds to the edges of the first and second step. The purple rectangles were copied from Figure 1 and adjusted vertically in such a way that the top rectangle matched the height of Prayer Man’s head.

The present analysis supports the view that Prayer Man was a tall person measuring 5’9” and that he stood on the second step of the Depository doorway in Darnell film. The exact body posture can only be reconstructed using 3D modeling. However, the 7 1/2 rule analysis provides another independent verification of Prayer Man’s location and body height, and it strengthens the case for Prayer Man being a man 5’9” which was the body height of Lee Harvey Oswald.